CRM - August 2008 - (Page 18)

ON THE SCENE: GARTNER AADI & GARTNER ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE Forming the Platform Now’s the time to decide upon a business process platform f a vendor tries to sell you a business process platform (BPP), what should you do? Be very wary, suggests Gene Phifer, managing vice president with industry research firm Gartner. “Right now, it’s a user-adopted model and not a market,” Phifer says. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, what is a BPP? Simply put, it’s an enterprise’s attempt to wrangle all of its complex workflows and activities in one place. “The technology is not easy, but it’s not rocket science,” Phifer says.“The stuff that is rocket science is [changing] a mindset of people that have been raised to develop things a certain way.” The real challenge lies in showing enterprises that it’s possible to combine disparate data, integrate on-premise and Web-based solutions, and to sync information in order to provide real-time value to users. “We think [services-oriented architecture] is difficult, but it would be impossible without a BPP,” Phifer says. So who has a BPP and where does it come from? Reiterating that a BPP is a user-adopted I model, Phifer says that some enterprises might have a BPP and not even know it: “I think we’re going to see serendipity drive a lot of BPP.” However, he says, there are perceptible signs of an enterprise that needs a central platform: • The organization is experiencing growing pains but doesn’t have the agility to deal with new and added complexities. • The value of customer relationships has decreased. • The number of customer transactions has increased more than the value of the collective customer experience. • The enterprise strategy has become foggy. • The business cycle is slowing down due to the state of the economy. • System requirements are changing and the rate of adoption is increasing. Phifer highlights the megavendor offerings of BPP—or similar platform-like solutions. He calls SAP the “poster child of BPP,” giving the company credit for being out there early and providing a well-rounded suite. He says SAP’s only issue is with plugability. As for Microsoft, Phifer says the organization has parts of a BPP, but lacks an enterprise-class offering. He says IBM has the most complete infrastructure of all the providers, but doesn’t sell applications and only sells to infrastructure providers. As for Oracle’s newly acquired BEA Systems, Phifer questioned what Oracle is going to do with the BEA technologies. He fears that Oracle will focus on providing merely a level of support, rather than true enhancement to the technology. According to Gartner, only 10 percent of organizations have a BPP in place—a figure that’s expected to double within the next two years. Betsy Burton, a Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst, notes that the diversity of IT systems is only increasing over time. “The challenge is that Web and cloud computing is making this much more complex,” she says, pointing out that users won’t stop looking for an application or tool that fits their needs—whether that tool comes from within the enterprise or not. Many enterprises may see this as a risk, but Burton disagrees: “Don’t think of enterprise architecture standards or ‘crowd standards’ as a contradiction, but as a continuum.” —Lauren McKay CRM on As Twitter continues to evolve, the microblogging service has begun to suffer some growing pains of its own—outages, downtimes, and scalability issues. Falling victim to its own popularity is a set of circumstances the CRM industry is well familiar with, so we gathered some recent tweets about CRM software and the troubles and frustrations users have been experiencing. Want to follow CRM magazine on Twitter? You can find us at www.twitter.com/destinationCRM. oOo_markus_oOo: I'm reading a blog post about twitters problems with mysql and how it was written as a CRM tool more than a messaging tool. w0wzers! ekopsala: Why don't people get the difference between a Customer Data Integration hub and a CRM platform? basicrowan: Updating our CRM with client information. Trying to pretend we won't be switching again less than a year from now, making this effort moot. johngriffith: my customer database is dying; Oh lord wont you send me a new CRM, my friends they got Siebel my boss just wont spend (credit J Joplin) caroleking1: Why are US CRM software vendors so crap with their own customer and potential relationship management HighTechDad: Yarmis: 1/2 of CRM implementations have failed because not solved individual sales person's dilemma. Social should help. 18 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | AUGUST 2008 www.destinationCRM.com http://www.twitter.com/destinationCRM http://www.twitter.com/destinationCRM http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - August 2008

CRM - August 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Maximum Security A Code Win Doesn’t Blow Forming the Platform CRM on Twitter CRM Class Is in Session Making CRM Mandatory for University Administration Required Reading Cover Story: Calling it Quits Wouldja Look at That? 8 Enterprise Strategies That Stick CRM Searches for Search All Lines Are Not Busy UC: As Easy as A-B-C Even Contact Centers Have Room for Improvement Money Lying Around? Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - August 2008

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